Gimme Some Sugar

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Monday, August 12, 2013

I can sum up NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s response to a ruling effectively ending the city’s “stop and frisk” policy (it’s hard to see how any reform will be possible): “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!"
He defends the racial profiling by saying, "They fight crime wherever
crime is occurring, and they don’t worry if their work doesn’t match up
to a census chart. As a result, today we have fewer guns, fewer
shootings, and fewer homicides. In fact, murders are 50 percent below
the level they were 12 years ago when we came into office – something no
one thought possible back then."

The problem, of course, is that the racial component of “stop and
frisk” is an abject failure and Bloomberg’s math doesn’t add up at all.
During the trial which led to her ruling, Judge Shira Scheindlin noted that
“A lot of people are being frisked or searched on suspicion of having a
gun and nobody has a gun.” In fact, only 0.14% of these searches turned
up a gun or contraband, “So the point is suspicion turns out to be
wrong in most cases.” Worse, some 80% of those subjected to “stop and
frisk” were minorities. So not only is it applied in a clearly racist
manner, but it couldn’t possibly account for a 50% decrease in
homicides.

Bloomberg also hopes to rally lefties by waving his gun control flag
and a whole lot of fearmongering; “The fact that fewer guns are on the
street now shows that our efforts have been successful. There is just no
question that Stop-Question-Frisk has saved countless lives. And we
know that most of the lives saved, based on the statistics, have been
black and Hispanic young men.”

The question isn’t whether or not it saves lives, the question is
whether it’s just and legal. This was the same logical fallacy that the
Bush administration fell in love with after 9/11; whenever they ran into
resistance from civil libertarians, they’d say, “insert abusive policy here would’ve prevented 9/11! Why do you hate America?”

A lot of things would prevent murder and reduce crime. If we killed
everyone in NYC, for example, the violent crime rate would drop to zero.
If that’s too extreme for you, we could lock everyone up in solitary in
a supermax — same outcome. We could institute 1:1 policing, where
everyone is followed around by their own personal cop, who keeps a
loaded gun pointed at their head. How about mandatory weekly lie
detector and drug testing for all citizens? There are a lot of things
you could do that would reduce crime drastically — the question is
whether they’re constitutional — or even a good idea — not whether or
not they work.

"Stop and frisk" is a police-state tactic and it’s practiced in a
racist manner. Whether it reduces crime or not is irrelevant — and,
since Bloomberg’s numbers are obviously horseshit, we can assume it
doesn’t.

Bloomberg’s shamefully hysterical defense of this policy is one of
the worst examples of fearmongering to come out of his office since Rudy
Giulliani occupied it. For the record, that’s not a good thing.